The present invention relates to a cylindrical type dry battery and a battery chamber into which the cylindrical type dry battery is assembled.
There are many apparatus, for example, electrical apparatus such as radios, head phone stereos, flash lamps and optical apparatus such as cameras, in which cylindrical dry batteries capable of supplying various amounts of electrical current depending on the necessity, and being widely sold on the market, are used. Generally, these apparatus are required to be highly portable, and accordingly, external dimensions of these apparatus are required to be highly compact. However, one component, for which a large space is necessary, is a dry battery, so that dimensions of the apparatus can not be reduced. Specifically, in an apparatus using only one cylindrical dry battery, electrode terminals of the battery are provided at both ends, so that electrode contact strips of the apparatus are provided on both ends of the battery. As widely known, at least one contact strip for the battery has spring characteristics so that dimensional deviations of the battery are absorbed and also an electrode of the battery can be contacted with the contact strip with a predetermined contact pressure. Therefore, a space for deflection of the spring action is also necessary, and further a predetermined space is necessary for connection of lead wires. Accordingly, for a battery chamber in which only one cylindrical type dry battery is intended, a predetermined space is necessary at both ends of the cylindrical type dry battery. Since there is a strong demand for down-sizing of all type of apparatus at present, the space of the battery chamber has become an increasing problem.
The first object of the present invention is to reduce the space of the foregoing battery chamber so as to allow down-sizing of various apparatus. In the present invention, not only the cylindrical type dry battery is used to which the invention described in detail as follows is applied, but also a common cylindrical type dry battery can be used.
The present invention relates to, as an application of the down-sized battery chamber, a contact strip of the battery for use in a single use camera in which simple camera functions are provided and unexposed film is factory loaded.
As is widely known, a single-use camera is a camera with factory-loaded film by which photographing can be easily enjoyed, and is mainly purchased when traveling, so that it is required that the size of the camera be reduced for portability. In order to satisfy this demand, a compact single-use camera, KONICA MINI.RTM. camera was marketed, and is now very popular.
It is now required that the camera be further reduced in size. However, since the basic functions of the camera are not changed, down-sizing of the camera has come, to some extent, to its limit. In these circumstances, the space for the battery is a relatively large component of the single-use camera. Accordingly, the second object of the present invention is to contribute to further down-sizing of the single-use camera by reducing the space of the battery chamber.